Sponsored by:

About the Episode

Today we will talked about Use of Force & Deadly Force with principal attorney Edwin Walker, Badger Guns, Gun Store was it a $5.73 million dollar land mark decision? Also UT Daily Texan trying to print lies about campus carry….

Austin is a pretty liberal city. UT Austin is a very liberal campus, by and large. So it’s not a huge shock that many in Austin and at UT have some reservations about campus carry.

And that’s fine. People are entitled to their opinion. The evidence would suggest that allowing concealed carry by licensed individuals does not increase violence on college campuses, but there’s nothing wrong with people having reservations about guns.

What’s aggravating, however, is when viewpoints get repressed by traditional media outlets in the area. The Daily Texan has seemingly made a point to not publish pro-carry pieces whenever possible. In their student submitted editorial section, this student newspaper has time and again refused, in writing, to publish pieces that supported campus carry. Even more troubling is editor-in-chief Claire Smith’s stated position against campus carry, which flies in the face of her campaign (editor-in-chief is an elected position) that promised a more inclusive range of opinions and pieces.

Madison Welch, a former regional director at Students for Campus Carry for the Southwest region, had an editorial supporting campus carry run in papers at SMU, UNT and UT-Arlington, not to mention larger Texas newspapers. The Daily Texan refused on the grounds that op-eds are generally restricted to UT students (this was former editor in chief Riley Brands).

This would have been just fine as a policy, except that a UT student who serves as SCC’s campus contact submitted a similar op-ed in favor of campus carry. This piece was similarly refused, but on very dubious grounds.

Claire Smith claimed that the paper could not verify that there had never been an incident because of campus carry at a college that allows campus carry, nor could it verify other opinion-based predictions made by Allison Peregory, the student submitter.

Now isn’t that strange? A newspaper unable to verify an opinion? I’d be willing to bet they didn’t so scrupulously fact-check the anti-carry pieces.

However, had they wished, the Daily Texan could have taken their cues from The Texas Tribune, the Austin American-Statesman, the Dallas Morning News, and the Houston Chronicle, all of which are major papers that printed a similar claim.

There’s also a working group at UT that has been tasked with looking into other campuses that allow student carry. Why couldn’t the student paper call the on-campus group?

The piece submitted by the SCC leader was relatively benign, and made an argument about the evidence of absence of gun violence incidents that result from campus carry policies. It did not lack evidence.

Personal bias from newspaper workers is natural. But it’s their job to hide that bias in their work, not expose it.